What is AfrikaBurn?

AfrikaBurn is a community of participants who come together to create art, costume, performance, theme camps, music, mutant vehicles and much, much more. All of this is created through a volunteer and gifting culture.

The main annual AfrikaBurn event takes place in the Tankwa Karoo, located in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa, at the end of April every year. Beyond this, a number of year-round activities take place across South Africa and include:

• The annual Decompression event, which takes place one month after the main AfrikaBurn event
• The Blank Canvas Express (a series of free arts workshops that take place during a roadshow that reaches out to disadvantaged communities in the Northern Cape)
• The annual Streetopia event, which is a free one-day event that sees local communities and members of the AfrikaBurn community collaborating in creating art and performance in urban settings. These now take place in both Cape Town and Johannesburg.
• Town Hall meetings, held occasionally as forums to which anyone is welcome to bring their topics or issues for discussion
• Outreach activities, which consist of a wide range of social development work done by AfrikaBurn’s team, and volunteers, that sees communities in need assisted in various ways with medical care, funding for schools and feeding programmes and more.
• Spark Grants, which see a range of community projects funded by AfrikaBurn event ticket money
• Volunteer Days (at AfrikaBurn’s workspace in Cape Town, and also in relation to the Streetopia event)

AfrikaBurn’s aim is to be radically inclusive and accessible to anyone. The touchstone of value in our culture will always be immediacy: experience before theory, moral relationships before politics, survival before services, roles before jobs, ritual before symbolism, work before vested interest, participant support before sponsorship.

To really understand AfrikaBurn, you should check out the eleven principles, which act as guidelines for the event and culture. They’re not rules, or commandments, but understanding them will unlock the magic of the experiences available to you.